The Hiroshima/Nagasaki Nuke attacks poll (thread 2)

[IndianaGreen]

Original thread is here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=65786&mesg_id=65786&page=

The poll is fine, but the thread has over 200 replies and it is getting hard to load for people with dial ups.

I want to continue the discussions here, and I invite others to continue their discussions on this thread. Here is what I wanted to bring to this thread:

Truman started the Cold War with his intervention in Greece

Truman started the Cold War with his intervention in Greece in support of a fascist government no less

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=65786&mesg_id=77821&page=

Character Assassin took exception to my post and demanded some proof. Well, here it is. As you read these excerpts, tell me if you are getting a certain feeling of deja vu, particularly when you get to the part of the oil pipeline:

The Truman Doctrine
and the Greek Civil War
excerpted from the book
Intervention and Revolution
The United States in the Third World
by Richard J. Barnet
World Publishing, 1968, paperback edition

In the name of the Truman Doctrine the United States supplied the military and economic power to enable the Greek monarchy to defeat an army of communist-led insurgents in 1947-49 and won a victory which has become a model for U.S. relations toward civil wars and insurgencies. Almost twenty years later the President of the United States was defending his intervention in Vietnam by pointing to his predecessor's success in Greece. The American experience in Greece not only set the pattern for subsequent interventions in internal wars but also suggested the criteria for assessing the success or failure of counterinsurgency operations. Greece was the first major police task which the United States took on in the postwar world. One of the most important consequences of the American involvement in Greece in the 1940'S was the development of new bureaucracies specializing in military assistance, police administration, and economic aid, committed to an analysis of revolution and a set of responses for dealing with it that would be applied to many different conflicts in the next twenty years.

<snip>

When President Truman announced the decision to help the Greek monarchy win the civil war, he stressed that the commitment was prompted by the "terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by communists.'' The United States was to use its power to put down violence. But, clearly, violence itself was not the issue, for throughout 1946, according to correspondents of the London Times and other U.S. and British papers, the Greek government itself had been carrying out mass arrests, tortures, beatings, and other retaliation against those who had been on the wrong side of the earlier civil war that ended in January, 1945. The foreign minister had resigned in early 1946, charging "terrorism by state organs." In Greece, as elsewhere, the violence of constituted authorities, however oppressive their rule, was judged by one criterion and the violence of insurgents by another. President Truman alluded to the corruption and brutality of the Greek government by conceding that it was "not perfect." But while the fascist character of the government genuinely bothered some members of the U.S. government, most National-Security Managers shared the judgment of former Secretary of State James Byrnes: "We did not have to decide that the Turkish Government and the Greek Monarchy were outstanding examples of free and democratic governments."

<snip>

Acheson was asked some pointed questions in the hearings about possible connections between the President's dramatic announcement of America's new "responsibility" for the Eastern Mediterranean and the authorization two days earlier of the trans-Arabian pipeline. Acheson replied that there was none. The charge made by leftist critics and a few disappointed British imperialists that the Truman Doctrine was principally a piece of petroleum diplomacy is a serious distortion. Nevertheless, there is no doubt, as Stephen Xydis observes in his exhaustive study of the relevant documents, that one motive for the United States' intervention was to stabilize the area so as to "contribute to the preservation of American oil concessions there."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Insurgency_Revolution/Truman%20Doc_GreekCW_IAR.html

[Forkboy]

1. A kick for IG!

[aneerkoinos]

2. Change of watch

It is equally important to acknowlodge who drove Greece into civil war in the first place:

UK, by not accepting ELAS (the strongest antifascist movement during occupation) in the governement and by bombing and killing them after they had agreed to give up arms. And I'm not saying ELAS didn't do several mistakes also, but their worst mistake was to trust the honor of Brits. After that UK was just too weak to end what it started, come the USA, even though only help for left came from Tito, Stalin respected Jalta where Greece was promised to Churchill.

Neadless to say, this history lead later to the tragedy of the Junta, and Venizelian politics returned to Greece only after 1980, first victory of PASOK that allowed the refugees to return to Greece.

During the the independent history of Greece the western powers have behaved towards Greece pretty much same way as those Frankish Crusaders who found it more convenient to sack Constantinople and colonize Greece than to continue their mission into Holy land.

Byron was OK, anyway :)

[Tinoire]

3. WOW! Just skimmed that first thread and looked at poll results

I must say. I am EXTREMELY shocked at how many posters defend the use of such an obscene weapon! I certainly hope that thread, that poll doesn't reflect the views of the Democratic Party at large because if so, I am in the WRONG party!

Kudos to you IG for continuing this and kudos to Hertopos for his/her great post from the eyes of a Japanese-American

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=82287&mesg_id=82287&page=

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. I'll Bet If You Asked The Nine Democratic Candidates At Least

Seven would say it was justified.

Why don't you e-mail their campaigns.

I will donate $25.00 to the charity of your choice if I am wrong

[Muddleoftheroad]

5. The party

Actually, DU does NOT reflect the views of the party at large. If that poll was done nationwide for Democrats, a vast majority would have been in favor of the bombings. It is only here that some hope to rewrite history in their own idealistic image.

[Friar]

6. I used to think it was unjustified

but I was young and idealistic. I now think the bombs saved 100's of thousands of lives on both sides. The Japanese would have died, every man, woman and child, before allowing a foreign soldier to step foot on their Homeland. Even after Hiroshima they would not accept the American terms of surrender. It took Nagasaki for them to negotiate in good faith (we allowed the Emperor to "save face"). The selection of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targeted cities is telling.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. We

allowed them to keep the Emperor because he denounced the war and he was a figure the Japanese could rally around during reconstruction.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. The Scholarship

There is a consensus among liberal and conservative historians that the bombing was justified.

I don't know how folks can substitute their wisdom for the wisdom of the people who were making the descions in real time nearly sixty years ago.

[zoidberg]

9. Perhaps you are in the wrong party

Take a poll of everyone who voted for Gore in the 2000 election. Take a poll of every Democrat office holder. I'd bet anything that the majority thought the bombing was justified.

[IndianaGreen]

10. If the atomic bombing was to end the war against Japan...

How come that the huge Oak Ridge facility in Tennesse was designed to manufacture THOUSANDS of atomic warheads?

Were we going to drop thousands of atomic bombs on Japan?

I think Truman thought the atomic bomb was just a bigger bomb, and he had no clue of what it really meant, and what the long-term effects of radiation were going to be. The scientists working at Los Alamos most definitely knew! I can find no other benign explanation for Truman making as disturbing statement as this one:

We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistakes; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war. It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.

President Truman
August 6, 1945

http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1945/450806a.html

[JohnKleeb]

11. Sigh I wish I could change my vote

I only voted regrettable because I have heard that many American soldiers would have had do die for an invasion of mainland Japan. So reading what has been said I would have opposed it. I still am not sure I think it was horrible but my understanding is limited on the Manhattan Project.

[bpilgrim]

12. i am glad to read your post

as i think is the reaction most folks would have once they know the real circumstances.

it amazes me that some continue to propagate the BIG LIE - it saved lies - even in this thread after all that was brought up in the other :shrug:

but i am glad to know that some feelings have changed.

:hi:

peace